The Mysterious Six-Up, Explained
P.S. You can read my latest article now: What Exactly Is a Product?
I’ve been practicing my genie skills lately, so when several of you asked me to write a post on six-ups, something I talk about a lot in this series, I said, “Your wish is my command.”
So. Six-ups. Let’s start with the basics: Simply put, a six-up is a six-section, hand-sketched storyboard used as part of a ‘design charrette.’ It helps individuals think outside their usual verbal stomping grounds. For teams, the six-up process helps them collaboratively come up with solutions, collectively understand what has to be built, and craftily forgo superfluous documentation.
“Collaborative working sessions are the platinum of problem solving — superbly valuable.”
Six-ups should be done in formal (but fun!) working sessions. In bringing a cross-functional team together to visualize potential solutions, you’ll come up with much more robust ideas for solving product problems. Such working sessions break down organizational silos (ex.: engineers only write code) and create a place for everyone to feed off each other’s unique insights and viewpoints. In short, collaborative working sessions are the platinum of problem solving — superbly valuable.
In addition to generating solutions with Herculean strength, design charrettes have another benefit: building trust. Because the solutions settled on in these charettes are created collaboratively, they cultivate team-wide buy-in and faith in each others’ ideas. This will be key in helping your team shine and will pave the way for more frequent, informal collaboration.
Ok, enough what and why about six-ups! Let’s talk how. Now, I’m about to get all detailed on you with my layout for design charrettes, but you should feel free to fit your design charrette to your team. Run them in a more or less formal manner as per your schedule and needs. Completing a ritual isn’t the end goal, solving problems with your colleagues is.
Before we begin, a side-note about size: Six-ups work best for a team of five to eight people. If you have more people, break the group into tinier teams and have everyone compare ideas at the end.
“Creating effective solutions if everyone has a different understanding of the problem is like looking for a flake of glitter in a grassy field.”
First, spend 15–45 minutes to defining your problem and its constraints. Creating effective solutions if everyone has a different understanding of the problem is like looking for a flake of glitter in a grassy field. Review the issue you’re addressing, the team’s assumptions (including personas, as explained in my inception blog post), your current hypotheses, and constraints (vision, feasibility, etc.). You can cover these topics in a number of manners: by looking at usage data, doing user interviews, holding a group discussion, and so forth. Choose the method your team is most comfortable with.
Once the background has been covered, set out for six-up land! For this step, everyone will work individually. Hand each team member a six-up template, a.k.a. a sheet of paper with six empty boxes on it. Make one a wonderfully bootleg, perfectly effective template by folding a big blank sheet of paper (we’re talking 11″×17″ — big ideas need space) into sixths.
“Visual thinking helps people craftily careen away from the idea ruts they’re stuck in.”
Then, start idea-ifying! Give everyone five minutes to storyboard a solution on their six-up template. Though people might be tempted to turn to words, don’t let them. Six-ups need to be visual; visual thinking helps people craftily careen away from the idea ruts they’re stuck in. If people run away screaming at the thought of drawing, let them in on the dirty secret of interaction design: if you can draw a circle, a square, and a triangle, you can draw every interface or sticky figure.
Drawings don’t have to take any one approach. One person might draw a digital UI flow. Another might sketch workflows. Yet another might go all in, depicting the offline perspective of the problem in one six-up cell and using the remaining five on sketching a novel solution.
No matter the route they take, challenge your team to let go of current or previous solutions. It’s only in abandoning old ideas that teams can think freely and focus on the requirements at hand.
“ Critique should help others build on ideas, not shut them down.“
When time is up, spend three minutes sharing and critiquing every single person’s six-ups. Presenters should cover the persona they focused on, the issue addressed, their hypothesis, and an explanation of their sketch. All listeners should provide critique and feedback focused on clarifying the presenter’s intentions. “Can you explain how this feature addresses the persona’s problem?” = helpful critique. “I don’t like that idea” = useless. Critique should help others build on ideas, not shut them down.
With feedback seeded in everyone’s brains, it’s time to iterate. Have each person make second-draft of their six-up solution, integrating the feedback they received. Once the five minutes for six-up drawing is over, have everyone present again. Here, you’re aiming to find the most standout ideas and develop upon them.
These standout ideas, usually represented in one or two six-ups, will help you see the clear direction in which your team is tending. If need be, do a third, refining round of six-ups. Last, pat yourself on the back. You came, you thought, and you’re much closer to conquering the problems that plague your product.
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Thanks to Brooks Hassig, Victor Matthieux, Drew Moxon, Hannah Rothstein, Kate Larsen and Tom Russo for helping with this
